


Float

by stelliferous_sky



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Before Shiro poofs to the astral plane, Canon Divergence, First Kiss, Fluff, Hella cliché, It ain't upside down because for the life of me I cannot figure out the physics behind it, M/M, Pining Keith (Voltron), Somewhere late season 2??? idk, Swimming Pools, Trigger warning for drowning? Is that a thing?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 06:33:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16153571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stelliferous_sky/pseuds/stelliferous_sky
Summary: Keith sees Lance at the pool again and tries to hide the fact that he hates deep water.





	Float

**Author's Note:**

> This is entirely self-indulgence and has probably been done a thousand times. Yet, I regret nothing.

  Lance was annoying. That was a universally acknowledged fact that Keith was very, very well aware and yet he was surprised when he found Lance being his annoying self in the pool, swimming leisurely laps like some sort of annoying, sun-kissed water god who just wouldn’t quit. (Being annoying. Not anything else, especially not his body.) Keith came out here to relax after a particularly gruelling training session with the Gladiator but god, was that a mistake.

  As soon as he realised it was Lance in the pool, Keith tried to get the hell out of there but his feet wouldn’t move and his eyes wouldn’t stop staring at the way Lance’s lithe muscles on his back and arms shifted with every lazy stroke propelling him across the surface, barely making ripples. By the time Keith realised he was drooling, Lance had already seen Keith standing on the floor.

  His face soured. “Seriously? Twice I try to use the pool and I run into you both times?”

  Keith rolled his eyes and turned around when Lance’s voice stopped him again.

  “What are you doing?” Lance asked.

  “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m leaving.”

  “Aw, Keith, no! Come back! I was just kidding.”

  Keith really shouldn’t go back. That was a disaster waiting to happen because it was hard enough keeping himself in check when Lance had clothes on. Plus Keith was exhausted and exhaustion was terrible when trying to keep his eyes off the Blue Paladin. It was like his eyes refused to listen to the simple logic that they shouldn’t ogle Lance.

  The first time he saw Lance without a shirt back in that elevator, things weren’t so bad that Keith couldn’t brush off. But now, Lance’s shirtless-ness was impossible to ignore. (Lance had definitely filled out more since last time too.)

  But... But Lance called him back instead of being a jerk. That was something, right?

  _Desperate_ , some part of Keith hissed.

  He shut that part down with a sigh, turning back. “Look, you stay on one side. I’ll stay on the other.”

  Lance waved a hand dismissively. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever, mullet. It’s not like you don’t enjoy my company.”

  “I don’t,” Keith lied, setting his towel on a rack against one wall, a few meters away from Lance’s. In actuality, Keith liked it a little bit too much. “ _You_ just want someone to blabber to.”

  Lance didn’t see past the lie and instead floated on his back, gently moving his legs. _Is there muscle on his stomach or is that just wat- Nope. Definitely abs. Faint, but still very much_ there.

  Well, that was one of the many Lance questions answered. Keith swallowed and sat on the edge of the pool in the shallower end, legs dangling in the water. He knew how to swim – his dad made sure of that before everything went to hell – but that didn’t make deep water any less daunting. Lance seemed like he was born in water. Heck, he _was_ water.

  With that thought, Keith slowly slid into the pool to make sure his feet could actually touch the floor. They could, with his head and shoulders comfortably out of the cool water too. Perfect. Only once he was sure he was in no danger of drowning did he dare to soak up to his head. When he surfaced, Lance was watching all the way from the other side of the pool and Keith cursed himself internally because what if Lance figured out he didn’t like deep water?

  He’d never let him live this down.

  “Wow, you weren’t kidding about staying all the way on the other side, were you?” Lance said, almost in disbelief.

  “I never kid about the distance between us, Lance.” _Mostly because I don’t trust myself when I’m not fully alert._

  “Ouch, Keith. That hurt my feelings,” Lance said, dramatically putting his hands over his chest under the water.  

  Keith definitely didn’t trust himself when Lance was giving him those big round eyes he could see even from across a good twenty-five metres. He rolled his hands into fists and starting wading along the edge because the alternative was to walk towards Lance and that would mean he would have to face in that general direction and his goddamned eyes were not up to the task. Even now, they kept fighting to glance sideways just so they could feast upon Lance being an absolute divinity and annoyance.

  “You know what we need?” Lance started. “One of those things like the ones Allura used to talk to Alfor and there were flowers and stuff everywhere. We should have it in here and put up holograms of blue skies and wispy clouds and white sand like Varadero Beach. That’d be totally cool!”

  Lance spoke about that place a lot. Keith assumed it was in Cuba but there weren’t any Earth encyclopaedias aboard the Castle. (He’d checked.) Every time Lance brought it up there were always others in the room and Keith never had enough time to ask about it – mainly because it took a few minutes for him to actually think about phrasing the question so he didn’t seem too interested.

  But they were alone now and Lance was speaking so fondly of it and... What the hell.

  “Where’s the beach?” Keith asked.

  “Cuba. My family goes every summer with all my cousins too. As soon as school finishes, we’re there. We used to spend all day in the water with all my gorgeousness,” he gestures at his body, “on display. The ladies there love me. Man, if they could see me now they’d drop unconscious from all these amazing muscles.”

  Keith rolled his eyes. “Pidge has more muscle than you.” Actually, Pidge was unexpectedly ripped for someone her size and age so that wasn’t fair. “No, Beezer has more muscle than you and it’s a robot.”

  “Hey! Now, that’s just mean.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Whatever, mullet.”

  Was it Keith or did Lance actually sound a bit resigned?

  “You think Pidge can do it?” Lance asked, changing the subject. He’d gone back to floating.

  “Do what?”

  “Make a hologram thingy for the pool. Then we can all get the faux beach experience.”

  “You should ask her.”

  Lance hummed and slipped into a very un-Lance-like silence. Keith stopped wading and watched but he couldn’t see his face. It wasn’t hard to guess that Lance was thinking about Earth and his family though.

  “So... Varadero Beach,” Keith began without thinking and couldn’t finish the sentence because- where was he going with this?

  “You ever been there?”

  “No. I’ve never been to any beach.”

  Lance nearly drowned at that. He flailed his arms and legs, splashing everywhere and for a moment Keith panicked because holy shit, Lance was drowning and Keith never got past stage four in swimming. (Not that he’d ever admit that to anyone, especially not Lance.) But the water-god recovered quickly and gaped at Keith.

  “You what?”

  “What?” Keith repeated, suddenly self-conscious, and folded his arms across his chest as he started walking again. “I lived in the middle of a desert, Lance.”

  “Keith, buddy, my man. That’s just sad. Next time we land on a planet with a beach, I’m taking you there no matter how ugly the beach is.”

  Keith really did try not to dwell on the fact Lance had said ‘ _I’m_ taking you’ as in Lance himself and possibly Lance alone. That sounded... good. And desperate. So desperate. He was slightly beyond caring at this point because for once, they were having a decent conversation.

  “I’m gonna teach you how to surf,” Lance declared.

  And the panic was back but Keith tried hard to quell it. “I don’t want to surf,” he said, surprisingly calmly. “Where will we get surfboards anyway?”

  Lance opened his mouth to argue as if on automatic response to anything Keith said but he closed it again and muttered, “Quiznak, you’re right. Man, aliens are missing out on a lot of cool stuff.”

  Then he turned to talking about having a bonfire on a beach like he used to do with his family and inviting local alien girls to the party. At this point, Keith stopped listening because every word made his heart sink lower and lower. But Lance’s voice was still there as Keith paced back and forth along the edge. His voice used to be annoying but it was hard to tell when that was now. Keith hardly noticed when exactly he started to keep an ear tuned for Lance’s voice instead of blocking it out. When exactly he started to enjoy listening to it.

  Lance’s voice was far from peaceful and higher than Keith usually liked and yet he could listen all day. Even when Lance talked about things that broke Keith inside, his enthusiastic chatter could still light up some twisted part of him.

  God, when did Keith fall so hard for this idiot? At first it was little things like noticing how blue Lance’s eyes were when his forehead was shoved against Keith’s as he yelled, “I’ll stick you in a wormhole!” Then it was acknowledging that Lance was smarter than Keith initially gave him credit for and coming to enjoy their banters because they were fun. It turned to noticing Lance in the corner of his eyes whenever he came into the room and sneaking glances when others weren’t looking. The glances became delusional daydreams, the pressing urge to hold his hands and irrational desire to shove Lance against a wall and kiss him senseless.

  The next thing Keith knew, he was in love with Lance and his stupid quirks and the way he would brighten anyone’s darkest day and how much he cared and his general openness, wearing his heart and emotions on his sleeves. It was an exhausting effort to not let Keith’s feelings be known to anyone else except Shiro, who saw right through all the glares and every bullshit that came out of Keith’s mouth.

   “Dude, what are you doing?” Lance asked, breaking Keith out of his thoughts. “You’ve been walking like that for how long now?”

  “Water therapy. It’s supposed to relax muscles.”

  An eyebrow rose. “I’m not going to bite you for coming a bit further out.” Then he winked and added, “You know, unless you want me to.”

  Keith blinked and froze. Was that flirting? That wasn’t flirting, right? Probably just Lance thinking he was some smooth-talking ladies’-man. “I’m fine here, thanks,” Keith grumbled.

  “Come on!” Lance whined. “I thought we’re friends now. We bonded, remember?”

  “Oh, _now_ you remember the-”

  “You know what? I’ll come to you.”

  “Please don’t.”

  But it was too late. Lance had already disappeared under the surface and all Keith saw was a blurry shape swimming for him at shocking speed. _Holy crap, why is that so..._

  Lance popped up alarming close, sweeping his hair back and running his fingers through it. He had that smirk on his face that meant trouble and it, along with his goddamned hair and chest in Keith’s face, almost made him spontaneously combust. 

  Keith frowned and gripped his arms tight because the alternative was to either get the hell out and let Lance win whatever this was or to run his hands across the plane of chiselled chest and stomach and dig his fingers through that hair. (Keith liked the latter option.)

  “Get out of my face, Lance,” he growled instead of doing either of those things. “Go back to your side.”

  “What is your problem? You’re not even relaxing right. Let’s do something actually fun.”

  Keith glowered at the door. “Like what?”

  “Let’s play chicken.”

  “With two people?”

  “All right, what do you suggest then?”

  “How about you go back to whatever you were doing on your side and I’ll enjoy my side _alone_?”

  A huge wave of water washed over him.

  “How about no?” Lance said.

  Keith spluttered and pushed his fringe out of his face to see Lance already backing away, arms raised above the water with a shit-eating grin on his face. Then he splashed a microsecond before Keith raised his arms on instinct.

  “Oh, now it’s on!” he yelled before lunging after Lance to get closer and sent a wave crashing into Lance, who didn’t bother to shield himself.

  Lance laughed and kept walking back slowly, water dripping down the tips of his hair and his sharp chin. Then he splashed again.

  Keith didn’t shield anymore and swam to catch up with Lance so he could get back at him. Back and forth, they sent wave after wave as Lance treaded towards the middle of the pool. Keith swam after him and hardly noticed the water in his eyes because there was Lance grinning from ear to ear and hooting out laughter without a care in the world. And it was because of him.

  Caught up in Lance’s laughter that echoed through his bones and shivered down his spine, Keith didn’t realise that by the time he stopped swimming he was almost halfway across the pool and the floor beneath his feet was gone.

  “ _Shit!_ Lance, I-”

  His head was under and he was sinking and the chasm under him yawned and yawned and the floor was a lifetime away as he kicked and flailed in desperation, water burbling and burning in his throat and nose.

  Somewhere beyond the blood-red terror, he felt a hand wrap around his wrist and he didn’t register the feeling of rising until his face was in the air again and Lance’s frantic voice repeated, “I got you, buddy,” over and over. 

  Keith coughed and spat water, hungrily drawing in air in its place. Despite nearly drowning to death, somehow he still freaked out over the fact his arm was thrown over Lance’s shoulder and had an arm around his waist, holding him above the surface.

  Lance took him to the edge of the pool and Keith retracted his arms, instead clinging on the edge for his life, coughing.

  “Are you okay, Keith?” Lance asked.

  “Yeah,” he managed to rasp. “I’ve been through worse.”

  “What happened? You were fine and then you just plopped.”

  Keith’s face burned and he couldn’t look at Lance. “My legs cramped.”

  “Yeah, and I’m the queen of Altea. I thought we were past all the bullshit.”

  _You have no idea._ “I’m going to go.”

  Keith made to hoist himself over the edge but a gentle hand on his arm stopped him.

  “You can’t swim in deep water, can you?”

  Where was the smirk in that voice? The triumph? The gloating? Why was it so soft? Why was Keith hearing what he wanted to? “I can swim. I just can’t...”

  “Float,” Lance finished. “Are you embarrassed about that?”

  “Wouldn’t you be?” Keith sighed, slipping back in the water and holding onto the edge. “Go on. Rub it in my face.”

  “Do you really think that lowly of me? I may be a jerk but I’m not a complete asshole, Keith. I’ll teach you.”

  Keith’s head snapped up. Lance was smiling softly, unsurely and Keith’s heart stuttered. He was serious. He was really offering to teach him how to float. Keith’s entire body burned. Maybe taunting and teasing was better than this sympathy because Keith knew how to handle the banter. This was something else entirely and he didn’t know what he was meant to do. So he glared at the door again.

  “Oh, shut your pride and let me help,” Lance said with an eye-roll clear in his voice. “This is good bonding exercise.”

  Suddenly, Lance was grabbing Keith’s wrist and pulling him away before he could make sense of the searing hot hand on his damned wrist. Keith yelped and reached for the edge, for the safety, that was going further and further away but Lance was stronger than Keith was willing to admit.

  “Hold my wrists and kick your feet,” Lance instructed.

  Keith had no choice but to obey if he wanted to live. He gripped Lance’s arm like vices until he was sure there was no chance of him dying. “Lance, take me back.”

  But Lance was grinning, oblivious to Keith’s terror. “Relax, Keith. I’m not going to let you drown. We don’t have time to search the galaxy for another Red Paladin. Now stop slacking off and move your legs. I can’t do the work for both of us for that long."

  Keith kicked, growling under his breath. Now, he was more aware of the length of his forearm in contact with Lance’s but he pushed that aside too and diverted his attention to surviving. _Kick, kick, kick._

  “No, not like that!” Lance said. “Egg beater kick.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “You know, kick your legs in circles one after the other. Like beating an egg. Look at my legs.”

  Lance made it look easier than it was. For all his coordination on the ground, Keith’s legs refused to cooperate in the water. They knocked into each other constantly and both tried to circle in the same directions. He was a disaster and he knew it. His body burned hotter and hotter as Lance kept correcting with unbelievable amount of patience that Keith would never be capable of.

  After fifteen minutes, Keith finally got it if he concentrated hard enough. _Right, left, right, left, right- fuck._

  There was a hand on his mouth.

  Lance tugged on Keith’s bottom lip that had rolled in between his teeth, coaxing it out. “Don’t do that,” he murmured, eyes on Keith’s lips. “It’s going to start bleeding.”

  Keith sucked in a sharp breath because _what the hell was that?_ That didn’t stop him from glancing at Lance’s lips, starting to turn blue. He’d wondered a thousand times what it would be like to kiss them, part them gently and taste him.

  Keith cleared his throat and looked back down to his legs, trying – and failing – to regain his rhythm. Somehow his hands had moved up to Lance’s shoulders and Lance’s hands were on his hips, thumb sweeping back and forth on his hipbones. If this were a romance movie, this would be the moment they would kiss.

  God knew Keith wanted to. On the mouth that had parted slightly, along his jaw, down the column of his throat, on the crook of his neck and across sharp collarbones where tiny freckles formed constellations far more beautiful than any in the sky.

  But just one simple kiss would suffice, only to know what it felt like to kiss Lance. If he knew the answer, if he knew for certain how Lance felt about him, maybe he could finally start to fall out of love. Maybe it would stop this aching need.

  “What are you thinking about?” Lance whispered.

  Keith let out a bitter laugh. “Doing something I shouldn’t.”

  “I think...” Lance was drawing closer, his face so close that Keith had to look up. Lance’s eyes were still on Keith’s lips, dark and intense and hungry. “I think I am too.”

  That was all the warning Keith had before Lance kissed him. One second, two seconds and then gone before Keith could get over the shock of it all. He watched as Lance wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, still holding onto Keith with the other arm. Then he smiled lop-sidedly and nodded at Keith’s still legs as if he wanted him to just continue after _that_.

  No. That wasn’t fair. He didn’t get to kiss Keith and pretend it didn’t happen.

  Keith grabbed the back of Lance’s neck and kissed him again and again and again, fierce and firm and Lance met every move of his lips with his own. Lance kissed like he was fire and Keith was going up in flames and he loved it. He slipped a hand into Lance’s dark hair and felt the low sound that escaped Lance’s throat in every inch of his soul. What he would do to hear it again.

  Fast and needy turned into slow and sensual. Keith didn’t know who had moved when but he wasn’t surprised when his feet touched the floor and his back pressed against cold tiles, hot, demanding hands pinning his hips into place. He’d been drunk but this kind of intoxication was bliss and beautiful and so... Lance.

  The feelings of his mouth lingered as Lance placed his forehead against Keith’s, both breathing hard, stomach pressed against each others’ and hot breath fanning across Keith’s cheek.

  Then it finally hit.

  Keith kissed Lance. In the pool. On the Castleship. In space.

  He reeled, taking Lance by surprise but that didn’t put much space in between them. “Shit,” he swore. “I’m sorry. I-I shouldn’t have-”

  Lance grabbed his arms and turned so that he was facing him again. “Dude, I kissed you first. And... I want to do it again if you want to.”

  Keith blinked. This had to be a dream. Maybe the Gladiator got his head harder than he thought. Lance, the guy who never stopped squabbling and arguing with him, just kissed him countless times and wanted to do it again? It sounded delusional.

  Until Lance kissed him again, just a small peck that lingered and twisted Keith’s stomach, making him follow in yearning as Lance drew away.

  No, this was real. Very real.

  “Yeah,” he breathed, voice hoarse. “Yeah, I want to do it again.”

  Lance grinned, bright and beautiful, lips bruised, hair mussed and eyes shining.

  Maybe Keith didn’t need to fall out of love.

**Author's Note:**

> kick


End file.
